


Things that Cling to Scar Tissue

by WearingOutWinter



Series: Femslash February Archive Trawl [1]
Category: The Only Living Girl in New Scars, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Colors, Dream Logic, F/F, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 21:31:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1241452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearingOutWinter/pseuds/WearingOutWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things look different, in new scars or (the capitals are important) New Scars. But all the girl has ever really wanted is someone who sees things the same way she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things that Cling to Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> To celebrate/mourn the passing of February, the month of femslash, I'm posting some of my older works, both fanfic and not, that feature f/f goodness. This is the first of those stories, written three or so years ago in an attempt to ape the style of The Only Living Girl in New Scars by Warren Ellis, a tiny little piece of fiction that I think has haunted me more than anything else I've ever read. So I wrote this to try and exorcise the hold it had over my brain. 
> 
> And also to ship the titular character with Delirium, because I ship Delirium with basically everybody.

It’s three in the morning for her, and noon for everyone else, when the only living girl in new scars first realizes there is someone else in the city. She does not know why she wakes, nor why she goes to the window, around which the harsh light bleeds and oozes, nor why she pulls away the blinds, leaving one corner of her blinded and blinking in sunlight she’s almost forgotten, except maybe to see what looks back at her, from the burning white city outside her window.

Two strange eyes.

Looking back at her.

Later that day, when the stars are all alive again and the only living girl in New Scars is out on the streets, she thinks she sees them again, gliding past in the rushing silence of the last bus away. The green one looks hopeful, the blue one looks sad, but both eyes are gone before she can answer with a look of her own.

When she finds a dead cat, lying in the street, and kneels to cut a benediction into its back with the last piece of her last bottle, she almost feels hand on her shoulder, soft as a glance. The only living girl in New Scars looks around at the scarab-eyes of the buildings, made to watch over dead things, and decides to go home early.

She catches a glance of her, in the neon wound of a club promising GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Her skin is the sunless shade of the living, and she looks the only living girl in new scars in the eyes just once before the ghosts of the city snatch her away. The only living girl’s heart quickens, just a little, and the words tremble at the tips of her tongue, her fingers, her blade.

After that, she’s everywhere, the scattered pieces of her waving to the only living girl in New Scars from every corner. Her hair, in all the colors of the city, flaps at her from every flagpole, her quiet, padding footfalls echo in every drop of rain. The rim of every glass tastes of her, her face looks back from every drop of blood that falls from the only living girl’s nose, her lips, her words.

It’s with the words that she finally finds her, eyes and hair and skin and touch and footsteps all coming together to form a person, who steps from among the fake television people and plucks the tiny blade from trembling fingers. When she kisses her, the color of their lips together is just right.

And then she whispers the word into the mouth of a living girl, as dawn breaks over the city.

  
  


 


End file.
